VISUALS AS A CATALYST FOR CLIMATE SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

Cover of the open-access book, Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions.

During the pandemic, I coauthored the article “Visuals as a Catalyst for Climate Science Communication” with four fellow GNSI members. The article was published by Springer in May 2024 in the open-access book, Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions.

Visuals play a critical role in improving understanding of climate science, yet many communications teams fail to hire professional visual science communicators (aka science illustrators or communication designers). These professionals an underutilized resource in the collaborative effort underway to foment changes in policy and behavior necessary to address the unfolding climate crisis. While science illustrations have a robust history in textbooks and picture books, they are quickly replaced with stock imagery outside those realms, particularly when describing climate change topics.

Visual science communicators are practitioners who have a mastery of graphic design principles and other art forms. We are also fluent in scientific concepts. With this unique combination of skills, the visuals we produce can deliver complex information in concise, easy-to-understand ways. In the paper, we demonstrate the potential for explanatory graphics to transcend language and cultural barriers, learning differences, and knowledge or skill gaps. Well-designed visuals deepen engagement, combat overwhelm/climate fatigue, improve decision-making, and encourage people to act in a way that makes sense to them and their community.

As coauthor, I was responsible for writing the introduction (citing an example of a visual metaphor by Real World Visuals), and “Part II: What Makes Effective Visuals;” as well as copy editing prior to manuscript submission.

Explore the article below, or download your own copy.

I added one of my own illustrations (Fig. 11, p. 251) to show how art connects on an emotional level. In June 2021, W. Sean Chamberlin, writer and oceanography professor at Fullerton College, asked if I could create oceanography figures geared toward young college students. With 25 years of experience in teaching, Sean saw a need for editorial figures students could relate to better than those found in conventional textbooks. Emotional connections heighten engagement and retention, and help students connect better with abstract concepts like climate change and human-caused greenhouse gases. In this illustration of the Earth’s seven spheres, I placed the anthrosphere centrally, suggesting it has a disproportionate impact on the other six spheres (clockwise from top left: heliosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere).